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Mariah Carey – I Want To Know What Love Is
Love in youth is often fascinating, captivating, and total. It can be like this already when an elementary school student falls for a classmate who sits at the next desk tugging at his or her heartstrings or when a pubescent directs his or her passionate admiration and secret dreams at a public figure. Love is true for many youngsters also in these experiences. Falling in love becomes particularly touching on the threshold of adulthood during the first steps of dating. It can be like grace, anxiety, and fascination simultaneously.
When in love, emotional experiences and behavior get their peculiar form. Still, falling in love and the way one shows it are learned to a great extent and respond to those social and societal expectations leveled at people. As far as is known, Francois de
All things considered, people preconceive love based on the models, stories, rules, and rituals that are transmitted to them from generation and society to another. Show business provides us with its own points of comparison. We are being taught what love is. We learn to interpret and show love in a certain way. Additionally, we learn about love and our experiences of love by ourselves.
WHAT DOES FALLING IN LOVE INVOLVE?
“Falling in love is madness,” many famous authors have stated. Robert Burton noted in the 17th century, that not only love is madness but also “disease, spree, agony” and described in great detail the shaking and negative influence of love both on individuals and the whole society. This is how he also showed his respect for Francis Bacon who stated quite resolutely at the end of the 16th century that “it is impossible to be in love and be wise”. Bacon’s thoughts are greatly supported in Shakespeare’s pieces as well. Later on, the definitions of the nature of falling in love have been presented more and more. Alberoni describes falling in love as assimilation; Tennov refers to limerence; Girard talks about losing oneself and Fromm about the disappearance of individuality; Askew refers to neurosis, Kilpatrick to anti-social behavior, and Stendahl to crystallizing.
On the contrary, love can be understood as a divine phenomenon, a manifestation of immortality among mortal people, and a way and accession to holiness. Erich Fromm considers love as an active power that connects people with each other. It makes isolation and loneliness to disappear providing the feeling of unity and security.
The we-experience that two people in love share can be quite world-shaking by its depth: Francesco Alberoni felicitously regards falling in love as the derivation of two people mass movement. All this and much more are written in the myths, fairytales, and stories of humankind already centuries ago in the same way as today. Falling in love is really “a many-splendored thing” as was the name of Han Suyi’s novel from 1952. This also in line with John Lee’s famous love typology; he used this typology to analyze the conceptions and essence of love through the analogy of colors and the colors of a rainbow.
Lee distinguishes six ways of falling in love of which three (eros, ludu, and storge) are the primary and three (mania, pragma, and agape) secondary ways of falling in love. Several various combinations are located between these dimensions. Because of the numerous definitions for love the whole verbal illustration of love can be questioned: the words seem to be too platitudinous and ordinary by the side of flamboyant and omnipotent love. Nor is the language the only one being insufficient; consciousness and intelligence have their limits also when trying to comprehend what happens in love.
FROM “FALLING IN LOVE” TO “BEING IN LOVE”
Loving is different than falling in love. Usually, love begins with falling in love. It is a gate to love; yet, faraway from love. Falling in love can be a powerful emotional whirlwind that outruns everyday life. It can be magic of joy and happiness, excitement and pleasure, corroded by insecurity and the fear of losing love. For some, love develops little by little based on friendship without any hot whirlpool of passion. Another tends to fall in love by deliberate pondering about the mutual compatibility and the progress of love affair.
Answers to the question of what happens when one falls in love are manifold. The opinions of personality theorists can be divided into two schools. Some consider falling in love as a valuable experience: it enhances the development of the integration of an individual’s identity and personality. However, some other theorists emphasize the negative consequences of falling in love: it strengthens irrationality and dependency.
Similar numerous phase descriptions about the origin of love and its stages have been drawn up. Braiker and Kelley noted that a love affair develops by four phases (casual dating, serious dating, engagement, and marriage) each of which includes four different dimensions: love, conflict, maintenance, and ambivalence.
Goldstine et al. have identified three phases of a love affair. The first phase is the period of falling in love where the partners feel passion, tension, insecurity, and vulnerability. This phase is the time for high self-respect and reciprocity as well as idealization. The second phase is the period of disappointment and alienation. A couple find themselves extremely different from each other; blaming the other and disappointments are typical in this phase. The probability of breaking up is at its highest. If a couple gets through this phase, they will move on to the third one where the expectations to each other become more realistic. On the one hand, in a relationship, the partners experience powerful appreciation to individuality and, on the other hand, security as well. In Goldstine et al.’s theory, love turns from romantic, passionate love into realistic, “companionable”, “mature”, or “right kind of” love, if the partners manage to overcome the period of unwelcome emotions. Tzeng has specified the development of love by eight stages (Octagonal Stage Model), Coleman have introduced a five-step model, and Levinger ABCDEmodel (Acquaintance, Buildup, Continuation, Deterioration, Ending model). Alberoni considers the process of falling in love as a sort of series of tests. With these tests, one seeks security and answers, for example, to the questions of whether the other loves enough, whether this love is real, whether he or she is able to break away from the other, and so on. If a couple gets through these phases, falling in love will proceed into a deeper phase that could be called “loving”.
The abovementioned general descriptions of the process of falling in love tend to repeat almost the same features. Romantic love is seen as a linear process: a couple falls in love, loves each other, and either loses love or deepens it. In this perspective, the very first love is quite special by its emotional and learning experience; and, usually, takes place in adolescence.
Regardless of age and various theories, the event of falling in love however is one-of-a-kind for everyone; nor does it progress by any general model. Everyone loves by their own way and the experience of falling in love is individual, unique, and subjective.
Where Does Love Start?
Where does love start or how invented love are questions deliberated by poets and composers all over again. This is of great interest. Hardly anyone finds it easy to explain how their personal love began or what made them fall in love. “It is hard to tell,” “It just started,” “The other just happened to be there,” and “It started in the spring” appear to be felicitous remarks. When analyzing the participants’ experiences, it seems that the beginning of love was not by any means “written in the stars” or “determined by destiny or amour” but a result of even rational action as well.
Falling in love is possible if one is willing or wants to fall in love. Then, falling in love is considered positive, important, and desirable. The wish to fall in love also embodies lovelorn or the hunger of love or is a consequence of the desire to be loved. My emotional life needed refreshment and then I met him. For the young, the model of juvenile culture may provide the impetus for the readiness to fall in love. Young people find it important to lean on others of the same age, act in the same way, and thus, pursue strengthening their own position.
Indeed, the reason for falling in love can be the pressure from a peer group: it seems important to date because everybody else is dating. This is how the young want to show their friends and parents that they are able to correspond to the expectations of young people having a boyfriend or a girlfriend. At that time, it would elevate your status if you had a boyfriend. You were supposed to date with someone… the boy kind of aided in that.
The readiness to fall in love can also represent people’s willingness to change. If life is tangled, soul is wounded, or the landmarks of one’s own development and future are lost, love can be used as a magical mirror through which the circumstances appear in a better way. People may believe that love offers the first aid and way out from the agonized life situation. Young people can find falling in love as a means to cut loose from childhood home. Finding someone to date with seems attractive as such; it opens the entrance to adulthood. Then, selecting partner can exemplify a way to rebel against authorities; the young can find their way to such a person who is the perfect opposite of the parents’ wishes.
That boy was a horrible hooligan, my parents did not approve me hanging out with him at all… that was kind of rebellion against my parents. Young people can show that they are on their own and it is about their personal choices. I didn’t care who he was as as long as he/she loved me back… it was connected with maturing; I found it necessary to do like adults did.
